The Creative Woman

rheCreathOe^oman

Quarterly

ourri

The

^wOman A quarterly, Governors State University, Park Forest South, IL 60466. vol. 2, no. 2, autumn 1978

A quarterly published at Governors State University under the auspices of the Provost's Office ©1978, Governors State University and Helen Hughes
STAFF

Helen E. Hughes, Editor
Lynn Thomas Strauss, Editorial Assistant
Joan Lewis, Editorial Consultant
Suzanne Oliver, Graphic Designer

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Donna Bandstra, Social Sciences

Rev. Ellen Dohner, Religion

Rita Durant, League ol American Penwomen

Harriet Gross, Sociology/ Women's Studies

Helene Guttman, Biological Sciences

Mimi Kaplan, Library Resources

Shirley Katz, Music/Literature

Young Kim, Communications Science

Harriet Marcus, Journalism

BetyeSaar, Fine Arts

Mariorie Sharp, Human Relations Services

Sara Shumer, Political Theory

Emily Wasiolek, Literature

^laGMGTfuOTj
1978

Tabie of Contents

Page

Androgyny: The Unfinished Task Natalie Hayes 3

The Skydiver Helen T. Brown 5

My Mother— A Traditional Woman

And I— An Untraditional Woman Rhoda Riley 6

The Graphic Designer Suzanne Oliver 8

A Lovely Place on Cedar Street Shirley Katz 10

From the Editor's Bed Helen Hughes 1 1

Book Review— "Women of Crisis" Lynn Strauss 13

Cover Photo by Julie Taylor
BOTTLE, ROPE AND BRUSH

Androgyny: The Unfinished Task
by Natal ie Hayes

How shall we restore balance to
human life? The next threshold
crossing will be inner, psycholog-
ical, as men and women learn to
integrate the "masculine" and
"feminine" aspects of their being.

A change in the way energy is
transmitted qualifies for me as
a "threshold-crossing". The male
separated from the androgynous
matrix in evolutions first in
bacteria which foreshadowed that
separation which would appear in
creatures of larger size. The effect
of this split into two equal and
opposite sexes was to wildly expand
the gene pool, and Ordovician seas
swarmed with a phantasmagoria of
organisms of all sizes, shapes,
conditions, characteristics.

E. col i and Phylum Brachiopoda were
two such thresholds. Copulation
is the third, and it did not appear
until Permian reptiles. Until that
time, all the survival information
needed by any creature, microcosmic
or macrocosmic such as dinosaurs
were simple: to find shelter at the
moment of hatching, and to seek
food shortly thereafter. Therefore,
even a 50' Diplodocus had sufficient
intelligence to survive; he had
only two tasks to perform. Copula-
tion, as Jacquetta Hawks tells us
poetically in A Land added a third
task, that of seeking a mate and
mating. Thus symbiotical I y the
task developed the brain, and in
turn the brain further differentiated
the ways to perform the task. From
those giant couplings, "all slime
and scale" nevertheless evolved
Heloise and Abe lard.

The next threshold came about 230
million years ago when the first
Triassic mammals appeared as mud
grubbers, tiny enough to escape
predation. For the first time infor-
mation could be transmitted from one
generation to the next. (One could

almost say the female was the first
teacher. )

Motherhood, however, evolved too. It
did not spring full blown as Madonna
and Child, from the dawn of earth
time. Even much later, 135 million
years ago the Cretaceous tree shrew
dropped her young and left them for
two or three days returning to squirt
milk into their mouths and depart
again. The urine smell guided her,
and if she didn't locate them instantly
she left never to return! But the
male was never a relating member
of this group until nature experimented
with some mammals such as lion, wolf,
bear0 The bi parental family was the
masterstroke of evolution. And a
truly biparental family exists in
birds and has for eons (descendants of
dinosaurs), and in wolves, who have
developed a kind of ethical system: no
male will ever attack a female, a cub or
a packmember, no matter what the
provocation.

However, beyond that, the male urge
to split off is primal, phylogenet ic,
and it differentiates from a simple
organic drive to the search for more
and more complex forms. I think of
it as one gorgeous line of progression
from E. coli and Phylum Brachiopoda
to the ancient sun gods and Ra, and
the Logos. These are masculine
achievements and they symbolize the
masculine principle. Primitive man
developed rituals to break the
"imprint" to the mother: puberty
rites and becoming-a-man ceremonies
later evolved into the Bar Mitzvah
and its Christian counterpart,
Confirmation; all primitive cultures
still retain this ritual, although
In our modern culture we have only
vestiges of these. We have left to
us only the masculine skills, values
and goals which also can function
as separative instruments so that the
young will be able to free themselves
from dependency.

From the father the young learn skills,
values and goals, and this frees
the libido from childhood. The Indus-
trial Revolution deprived the male

of his five unconscious but fundamen-
tal supports: relationship to the
earth as farmer, carpenter, stone-
mason, miner- (creative relationship,
mutually beneficial); to wife as
equal partner in the home which
formed the foundation of society; to
children as teacher, guide and guru,
also a symbiotic relationship
mutually beneficial; to the community
as performer of any function,
physician, minister, attorney or
craftsman; and to Gode The adult
male, head of the family was secure
in this unconscious, symbiotic
network of relationships. He knew
his role, as surely as does any
tribal drummer or mask maker and
chiefo When fathers and elder sons
departed this natural, evolutionary
phenomenon, the Home Base as
ecological, biological, spiritual
and psychological center which
formed actually a mandala, an
atavistic, primitive structure
reappeared; the all adult, all
male, homogeneous group entirely
spl it off from the matrix.

I suggest that what has happened is
something of the same thing, today,
but on an altogether different level,
the psychological level. Today
adult males do not teach skills,
values and goals to their sons and
daughters as a general rule. Many
exceptions exist of course, but in
general, the male stopped transmit-
ting information first when he
entered the industrial machine, and
secondly, during the Great Depres-
sion. Ridicule, scorn, contempt,
indifference are not teaching tools0

They are weapons and they can ki I I
and maim, just as surely as can clubs
and whips. There is also paternal
deprivation.

Jung has said that the masculine
principle means knowing what needs
to be done and taking the necessary
steps to achieve it. And Irene
Claremont de Castillejo said in her
book Knowing Woman that the soul of
modern woman is still in great distress
for it has been left in the uncon -

scious too long. In less metaphysical
terms, this means excluded from
world cultures, and on all levels,
educational, ethical, spiritual and
legalo But now something is dif-
ferent. Now it is the soul of woman
that struggles upwards. Ha bet
mu I ier an imam? One solemn medieval
(male) scholar asked another. The
answer was NO! Another modern
psychologist even said woman has
no soul, she j_s the soul. What
utter rot, to deprive her of her
mortality along with her immortality!

But the hero struggles, the male
monotheisms carried the male urge
to become an individual, to bring
forth the mighty jewel of conscious-
ness from the deepest levels of the
psyche0 Out of the mob came the
hierarchy. Out of the hierarchical
group emerged the individual. And
out of the individual's collective
and personal unconscious emerges the
ego. It is the male hero who has
done this. He truly is the hero,
rescuer of humanity from unknowing.
But modern man has no feel ing of his
own; woman has carried it for him all
these millenia. No feeling was
permitted him. It was effeminate,
effete, weak, womanish, disgusting.
Overnight modern man must learn to
relate on a conscious level 0 That
is his next evolutionary task. The
family of man is in big trouble all
over the world. What we need is an
integration of male and female, Eros
and Logos, equal and opposite,
shoulder to shoulder instead of eye-
ball to eyeball, so we can get on
with the biggest job of all - to
answer the question of the sphinx:
What is the meaning of life?

4

THE SKYDIVER

His future was the sky. It stretched toward space

with fingers poised to catch the strands of sun.

It had a silken strength, which interlaced

the warp and woof of air and made them one.

Enveloped in its cloth he felt a king,

with prescient gaze he dreamed of greater deeds,

his kinship with the earth developing

an understanding of its human needs.

The past was grist of grief. This life to be

would supplement horizons long denied,

recipient of sunshined legacy

he spanned two worlds in joyous, airborne stride.

Helen T. Brown

MY MOTHER-A TRADITIONAL WOMAN-
AND I -AN UNTRADITIONAL WOMAN
by Rhoda Ri ley

My mother is a remarkable example of
a secure, non- I i berated woman.
She was brought up to believe that
her place was in the home and never
tried to dispute it. This, to her
mind, was a condition which not
only could not be changed, but
who would want to change it? After
all, women were meant for childbearing
and nurturing, and what could be
better for that purpose than staying
home? But my mother was also an
intelligent, creative woman who
knew, or learned how to lead her
own life, be self-actualizing,
encourage my father (a University of
Chicago Ph.D. geologist) to do his
thing, and permit him to believe that
his was the final word in his life as
wel I as hers and ours.

My mother became a community leader,
a teacher of many crafts, an example
to her many friends, and she did it
all from her home. She probably
took up her crafts as self-defense
against the boredom of being a
housewife and then went on to teach
others. Her philosophy of life seems
to have been to share her knowledge
and abilities with others. She taught
creative writing, painting, and crafts,
of which she is best remembered for
weaving. The name Fanny Cha Mis Bretz

is still revered by the weaving
guilds of the South Suburbs,, In my
father's house today hang her paintings-
scores of them-crowded on every wall.
Every curtain and drapery and bedspread
is handwoven, except for those bed-
spreads which are handquilted or
handtufted0 People came to her house
because she was unable to get out: my
father never taught her to drive.

My mother baked bread year round,
canned the summer vegetables and made
jelly and marmalade in season. She
derived satisfaction and served an
economic need by economizing on food,
raising chickens for the table and
breeding dogs to sell, by sewing
her clothes and mine and knitting
sweaters for the entire family. She
went to the city by train at least once
a week to attend one class or
another at the Art Institute. Writing
this, I find myself wondering how
In the world she managed to fit so
many things into her life0 The
answer, of course, is that all these
activities were not concurrent,, She
hooked and braided many rugs before
she ever took up weaving and never
made another rug after the house
became overrun with looms. I
haven't mentioned her garden-which
was a neighborhood showplace0 My
father constructed her looms for
her, did the hard work in the garden,
and praised her for her industry
and abi I ity.

MESSINGER SHORE,
DEVILS LAKE

by Fanny Cha 1 1 Is
Bretz

I started out my married life
In 1938„ During my period of
active motherhood I didn't work.
By the time my second and last child
was in school, I was back at work.
I worked in an electronics plant,
took advantage of the union
apprentice program and worked up
to the position of electronics
technician. I keep a motorcycle;
it is a symbol of my independence,,
I don't ride it often, but just
to know that it is there and that
I can go off with the wind in my
hair is worth a lot! What I do
these days ?s to care for my aged
father, cook three meals a day, keep
the house and garden, cut wood for
the fireplace, make jelly, sew, and
teach crafts when I can get away.

I work part time at a program for
senior citizens. Photography seems

to be my speed. I can read the dials,
mix the chemicals, feel a good
picture and understand what I am
doi ng.

I am not as traditional a woman as
my mother yet I am continuing in
her example of creative expressions
In photography ! have found a medium
of expression which is contemporary.
Using my own talent and today's
technology I express my impressions
of the beauties of nature. My
mother, the traditional woman artist,
provided me with the background that
has allowed me to be a non-traditional
woman artist.

Because I'm caring for my father,
my movement is somewhat restricted.
I'm a little worried about losing
out on some of my life. I don't
want to waste any of it! Am I
I i berated?

FEATHER AND STONE by Rhoda Riley

rfe

frcccphto
cier

Suzanne
OUver

When Helen as ted me out/at X
uuouJc/ 1 1 Kg to contribute to this
parte utair ittue, seet'm as hoou ft u)as
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about- it pern am £ the graphic
i&ijmir tor each iSSUe oC ke
Creative Udorvan Quarterly awd I
have, m artuuoirc b Submit, Car
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dpout the words gmphrc avid design
id -pirief tktuj -tend to tdiiyit X do
dfl the dirawiiACj5 -dead you See tin

tie Cccadue fuoiman. f^SJ^Jdff
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after edidny, and uakateuetr actujons
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put it iK am order fetgeeed upon iy
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kOJJe drauoin, ivhi'ch uJe hue.

do matse matters as easy
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-17

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typing pupeay ifiiin it ffiraugk ac
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flouo to a! toau foe n pleasing space

8

One op -Me -fhmf
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left over. One of -Hie. -biqqebf responsibil-
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waxed and toyed oixt in the proper
space.

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lettering to set -type for Hie head-
lines ljou see, Such ae the Me
of each individual issue, because
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J trip to do the, CnecehUe IdJornan
pasde-up m fa days} uJe cut
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paste* up jobs of tneoos tenets and

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our pointer, the paqcs musf t&
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printer 5itr%p(n kdS to Skoot Cplwl-
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include pkotvajrapfs an the issue,

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perform tfiie last: ioUt uue do ret
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the pointer do moot.

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hnd VolieUe, me d happens.

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job is done, ptw X must- waff
podienthj for -the resudtv ; Witi a
tdeifdpragar X ifwyfot add

9

A LOVELY PLACE ON CEDAR STREET
by Shirley Katz

A brick walkway and a side court-
yard with flowers, trees and a
few tables set off the neat and
graceful home of the Cedar Street
Gallery and Cafe in Santa Cruz,
Ca I i fornia.

Inside the doorway is a wooden
plaque which reads "Built in 1865.
An excellent example of Gothic
Revival architecture. Santa Cruz
Historical Society."

The gallery walls are white; the
floors and stairways natural wood.
Paintings hang uncrowded on the
walls. Upstairs are more paintings,
small sculpture, weavings and fine
pottery.

"Italian specialties" are served
in the courtyard or the back rooms.
The rooms are bright0 The food is
delicious and nicely presented on

handmade dishes.

Gwen Shupe and Mary Helen Chappell,
who restored the house and created
the lovely setting, are justly
proud (and a bit amazed) at the
results of their courage, vision
and hard work. As Gwen says," I
can hardly believe we did it.
You should have seen the place! It
was a dark and dismal wreck."

Stop in at the Cedar Street Gallery,
And tell these two creative women
that you read about them in The
Creative Woman.

CEDAR STREET GALLERY & CAFE

■in Cedar Street Santa Cruz, California 95060

10

FROM THE EDITOR'S BED

About this Issue:

Readers who expected to read
about "Pol itics and the Study of
Politics" in this issue may look
for the topic to surface again for
Volume III, No. 1 in Summer 1979.
Sara Shumer has agreed to continue
to read papers submitted on this
topic. We encourage you to send
material on this very important
issue.

Our Potpourri has been assembled
from articles, letters, photographs,
a painting, an idea, a poem, that
had not quite fit into earlier
topical issues. It's interesting
how things come together. As the
issue took shape we could see
connections.

Natalie Hayes, our most prolific
correspondent, wrote a many-paged
answer to the "Letter from Doug"
(Vol. I, No. 2) which has been
excerpted here as the lead article,
"Androgyny: the Unfinished Task".

Speaking to the League of American
Penwomen recently at the Chicago
Cultural Center, we had the
opportunity to meet Helen Brown,
President of the Poets Club of
Chicago. She writes this about
her poem Skydiver (page 5) "It is
not the daredevil thrill that
attracts young people. It is:

The rigid discipline engendered
In layering the parachute so
that it unfolds to perfection; the
target on the ground that is an
incentive to reach; the group
consciousness of the operation,
not only the camaraderie, but the
sharing of responsibility; and last,
but certainly not least, the physical
sensations of floating down, not
diving, as the name Implies. It is
a feeling of gratification, rather
than that of euphoria, which implies
lack of restraint.

Rather than a means of death, for
despondent persons, it is a new

11

way of life. The participants
long for the next "jump". This
is a serious encounter with a new
dimension, primarily for the young,
A physical descent of thousands of
feet in three minutes entails change
of blook pressures, strain on the
heart and circulation. It is a
one for one encounter with elemental
forces of I i fe0"

Rhoda Riley, a local photographer
and Suzanne Oliver, our graphic
designer, both identified with
The Creative Woman from the first
issue, here share their different
perspectives on the creative process
as they experience it. More
photographs by our prize-winning
Julie Taylor appear. And our new
editorial assistant, Lynn Thomas
Strauss, contributes a review of
Women of Crisis.

We are a quarterly in constant flux.
The editorial office is nicknamed
"the launching pad" for the ways
in which women come through these
doors, contribute for a while some-
thing of their essential uniqueness,
then blast off to greener fields
and greater challenges. New ideas
and new women continually refresh
our efforts. This is what we are
a I I about.

The Winter 1979 issue will deal
with Communications with Dr. Young
Kim as guest editor. Spring 1979
will be on Feminism as an Intel lectual
corrective to scholarship, and
Dr. Harriet Gross invites women of
all disciplines to write to us: what
is distinctive or different about the
way women do_ scholarship in your field?

As we enter our next period of growth
and definition as a quarterly of
general interest to women who are
engaged in the liberation of their
creative energies, we remind you that
you, our subscribers, are essential
to our continued survival. Write
a check now for five dollars and send
us your renewal. Write a check
for twenty dollars and remember
your friends with a gift for the
hoi idays.

*i5*.

w

BIRD'S NEST ON WINDOW

by Ju I ie Taylor

Is this a letter to the future?
Or is It a relic of the past?

Suzanne Prescott is working on a
project to create an archeology
now for the women of the future
to discover. What would you put
in a time capsule for our daughters'
daughters?

Send your ideas to the editorial
office of The Creative Woman0

12

BOOK REVIEW

WOMEN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles
and Jane Hallowell Coles. Delacorte
Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1978.

This book is first and foremost
a sharing of the lives of five
contemporary American women.
Deep connections exist among these
women who have never met, for they
all are touched by visions of
transcendence and nightmares of
terror. They all dream vividly
and often, day dreams as wel I as
night dreams. It is the stuff of
these dreams that so clearly affirms
that the life of a poor hardworking
woman is apart from and different
than the life of a poor hardworking
man.

As in Robert Coles' earl ler
Pulitzer Prize winning series,
Chi idren of Crisis, Women of Crisis
is a narrative drawn from the
intensive observation and study
of individuals. Because it is a
consideration of people rather
than of a problem, in order to
acquaint you with the book, I
must introduce you to the women
whose stories are here so powerfully
told.

First we neet Ruth James, a migrant
farm worker who's earliest memories
are of crawl ing after her mother
down the long dusty rows of
vegetables and who hated most the
hot bumpy ride on the migrant bus.
While constantly moving from one
end of Florida to the other she
dreamed of saving money and getting
a job in a beauty parlor, having a
little house that would be only
a short walk from the beauty parlor
and never going on the road again.

Ruth gained insight from what she
saw in the lives of the women
around her, and although her range
of choice was limited she recognized
that she did indeed have some choices
to make. She chose to be alone,

to be different. In order To
avoid the responsibilities of
children, she chose not to marry
and to exclude men from her life.
She never left Florida nor worked
in a beauty parlor, but she did
leave the fields and gain a measure
of independence and comfort.

Hannah Morgan, a woman of Harlan
County, Appalachla Is now living
in Dayton, Ohio working in a
supermarket. She remembers as
a child that everyone believed
that if you left the hollow, left
the mountains of Kentucky, then you
became lost. She knows she is not
lost, but still after all these
years in the city she thinks of
the mountains as her home.

Even as a girl Hannah was given to
vivid, confusing, unnerving dreams
and as an adult she has experienced
moments when "everything seemed
about to fall apart."

While traveling to work on the bus
she notices and becomes curious
about women in better circumstances,
What would it be like, she thinks,
to live in that big house, to have
a car, to stay at home all day?
Her teenage daughter also dreams
of a different life, and in living
through her daughter's adolescence,,
Hannah is changed and finds she
cannot get back to her old self.

We are next Introduced to Teresa
Torres, one of six children of a
Mexican farm workers' family now
living in San Antonio, Texas. She
early understood the significance
of the message she'd always heard,
"your whole life depends on your
husband". As a married woman she
moved into her husband's home
eventually giving birth to two
sons who also shared that one small
bedroom. She had no friend, only
brothers and sisters, and brothers-
in-law and sisters-in-law, and
cousins and more cousins.

As a teenager she had bad dreams,
dreams filled with terror and

13

humiliation. She also had a
powerful and confusing experience in
the form of an opportunity or
temptation to work for good money
in an illegal enterprise. She reject-
ed the offer, but held onto the
vision of hope and escape that grew
out of that event. As an adult
she says, "sometimes I wish I could
fight. I'd be a good fighter, once
I got my courage up. But now,
I'm afraid."

Moving from Texas to Alaska we
meet Lorna, the only daughter of
an Eskimo family. She was closer
to her father than any of her six
brothers, for as she says, "father
and I shared a similar spirit".
She worked with him doing carpentry
and repairs from about the age of
seven on.

She was, even as a child, her own
kind of person and was always
regarded by others as strange.
She was guiet and alone and
believed that the spirits of some
of the Eskimo women who used to
live in the village were asking her
to stand up and speak for them.

Because she was unlike other women
and yet not a man, she occupied a
unique position in her village and
ultimately led the women to break
with tradition and participate
in an activity that had previously
been inaccessable to them.

The last woman we meet is Helen,
a white woman from a Boston
"streetcar suburb" who has worked
for a long time in the home of a
prominent well-off Cambridge family.
Helen knows the family she works for
very well and she sees many things.
She sees that in spite of advantage,
comfort and pr ivi iedge, "the missus"
is not at peace with herself. That
although "the missus" works hard
for women's rights within the women's
movement, her consciousness doesn't
extend to those who do the menial
work in her own home.

Working for this woman everyday,
who is the same age and race, Helen
experiences more than anger, scorn
and prejudice, she also sees
similarities and there are moments
when the two women come rather close
to each other. At times her employer
will be upset and tell Helen of a
problem she's having with her
daughter, or Helen will see that,
although she is working for equal
rights, her employer does not speak
to her husband in the same way she
speaks to others. With her husband,
she speaks softer and sometimes
pretends to be a little dumb. As
Helen puts it, "she's no different
from any other woman, she uses her
wiles when she needs to."

Like the other women of this book,
Helen has a notion of transcendence.
She refers to her "spirit" and to
the "bad side" of her "soul". By
this she means that at times she
has wished to be a man, and has
dreamed of being rich and waited
on by others. But if transcendence
eludes these women they continue
to hope and wait and survive. Their
strength and courage is evidenced
in their struggle to persist, to
get by, to keep going,.

The Coleses have presented an
insightful look at the ambiguity
of sex roles in our society. They
have shown that for poor women
engaged in a daily struggle for
survival the enemy is a given
social order, an economic system,
but also a certain number of men.
They have articulated important
issues of sex and class. And as part
of the Radcliffe biography series,
Women of Crisis serves as a
reflection of the lives of particular
women, as a tribute to them and a
tool with which we can deepen our
understanding of them and of
ourselves.

Lynn Thomas Strauss

14

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